Sunday, October 28, 2007

a love for girls and animals and plants

After his failure to establish himself even marginally in regular employment (Peter Altenberg) drifted ever more to the periphery of polite society. By 1920 he was living in a tiny room at the Hotel London, an establishment which was little different from a brothel, on Wallnerstrasse. There he stayed for more than a decade, building up a fabled collection of picture postcards and nude pinups with which he covered the walls. An artistic consequence of significance ensuing from his collecting mania can be found in Alban Berg's "Five Orchestral Pieces after Picture Postcard Texts of Peter Altenberg". The public uproar at the first performance in March 1913 has gone down in the annals of music history. Outraged listeners screamed for the composer to be committed to the lunatic asylum at Steinhof, where, as it happened, Altenberg himself had been confined since the previous December.

To Die No More

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To Die No Moreis an artist's book about the marvelous embroideries of death taken from many sources both known and long forgotten.170 fragments - from Aries to Wittgenstein - collected and edited by Herbert Pfostl and Kristofor Minta with splintersby Kristofor Minta, ruins, appropriated by James Walsh, and small paintings of shipwrecks,animals, and ashes by Herbert Pfostl.Made with great care and sober like a good dream.Dedicated to the deeply dead and the truly living.2oo pages text - 25 color images$25.00

pony credo

An idea of books from a yearningto counter the all-polluting imagery-machineswith parables of plants and animalsand old storiesof black robbers and white stags.Fragments on death like mirrorsfrom a black sleepin the forests of fairy tales.All stories from the dust of the deadin fragments and footnoteslike melodies of heartbreakand north and night and exploration–breakdowns.About saints with no promise of heavenand lost sailors forgottenand the terribly lonely bears.The unknown, the ugly – and the odd.Collected grand mistakes,noble errors from many sources.Sinking signals - conscious or not – sonatas and last lettersand great insults.The impossible tears in landscapesof ocean or stranded whales.A going far back to coalsand cruelties and sobbinglike songs in whiskey and blood.Of soldiers’ last letters and all seven seas.With pirates and wars and prayers in holes in the ground.Of fallen women and orphaned childrenand drowned slaves and burned saints.To make songs from doubtand books to live by.